When it comes to mainstream society’s understanding of the adolescent brain, we are often limited to research which perpetuates harmful stereotypes and myths. Teenagers are lazy. Teens take stupid and dangerous risks. They’re impulsive and obsessed with approval from peers. While the people who stand by these stereotypes may point to neuroscience as evidence for…
When it comes to many social justice causes — such as LGBTQ rights, feminism, racial equality, and economic justice — youth are typically discouraged from speaking out and leading movements. Even historically, the majority of progressive movements were led by older individuals who supposedly had more wisdom and experience than their younger counterparts. However, the…
Young people share their experiences of navigating structural oppressions such as ageism through many different expressive media: writing, visual art, music, spoken word, dance, video/film, even multimedia techniques. Today we feature a musical work by a vibrant and thoughtful young person, Lux Onigman. Lux is a rising junior at Morristown High School. Their piece, Youth,…
When you say discrimination, people know what you’re talking about. There’s racial discrimination, religious discrimination, sex discrimination, and many others. But when you say age discrimination, people respond with a “Huh?”. Being an adult means that you were once a child. As children, we shared similar experiences such as curfews and being grounded. Did you…
Until very recently, I thought neuroscience had put up barriers to youth rights that no argument could cross. If the teenage brain is physically incapable of handling freedoms, then that’s the end of the discussion. It doesn’t matter how much we argue about the Constitution and equality under the law—no amount of arguing can make…
In the 1970’s, feminist Gloria Steinem wrote a famous essay considering ways the world might be different if men menstruated and women did not. Among other things, Steinem suggested sexist men would use women’s lack of menstruation to argue women are unsuited for the medical profession (“Women might faint at the sight of blood!”) or…
This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information. Does youth rights mean thinking children and adults are the same? No. Obviously there are physical, developmental, and other differences between children and adults. There are also plenty of such…
NYRA is pleased to announce the nominees for the 2011 NYRA Awards! The Awards were created last year to recognize significant contributions to the field of youth rights, both for and against. The three awards are the Youth Rights Progress Award, the NYRA Achievement Award and Ageist of the Year Award. The Youth Rights Progress…
In 1988, the William T. Grant Foundation released a report that found the picture painted by adult culture of youth in our society as pervasively negative. The commission wrote, There is a portrait of youth that is not only misleading, but harmful. We ought to correct the record out of a sense of fairness, as…
In early November, NYRA’s project, the Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth were invited to speak at the North Carolina conference of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA). IECA is a trade organization representing educational consultants, many of whom refer parents (and their teens) to abusive behavior modification programs. These referrals constitute a…
